This mob is becoming very dangerous !

Growers warned the Government that this would happen. We must return to a national pooling arrangement to be owned and controlled by growers. We will also need underwriting by the Government. The bulk handlers will always do what suits them in a deregulated market. The Government and Liberal party had ideas that were great on paper but a disaster in practise.

What a joke-AWB bitching about local monopolies. They had a national monopoly and locked everbody else out of the export market for years.

Observor, That was not a monopoly but rather a co-operative marketing arrangement with an obligation to maximise grower net returns. The Pool was able to provide a counter levering power. Growers are now totally at the mercy of large corporations.

Didn't take long did it. Wait until one of them goes overhead and then the poo will hit the fan. Yep you guys are right. As growers your power, control and safety has gone... well almost. All for paying a Jordanese trucking company $40/ton to shift grain all over Iraq, remembering 60%+ of that country's railways were destroyed in the Gulf War.

Corporations? I'll give you corprations. It is time for the people to stand up to the tyrants among us, be they politicians or faceless corporations. A corporation -- a legal fiction -- can live forever, collects enormous wealth, and has no morals, no conscience, and no need for clean air, water, or food. Corporate owners and officers must be held liable for the harms they cause. The economic, environmental and human costs of corporate power and wealth are staggering. From the destruction of rainforests to the profits of war to toxic waste dumps to the mad science of genetically modified foods to global warming, the frenzied, cancerous quest for money knows no limits in terms of human suffering and planetary destruction. To put the above remarks into historical context consider the following quotes. "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." - Thomas Jefferson President of the United States, 1812.

This is what the bookworms call "The Free Market".